Frequently used for printing on plastic, foil, acetate film, brown paper, and other materials, flexography or flexographic printing uses flexible printing plates made of rubber or plastic. The coated plates with a slightly raised image are rotated on a cylinder which transfers the image to the substrate. Flexography uses fast-drying coatings, is a high-speed print process, can print on many types of absorbent and non-absorbent materials, and can print continuous patterns (such as for giftwrap and wallpaper). A typical application for flexography is for printing on metal substrates; however, the implementation of a flexographic process that has proven particularly elusive is to flexographically apply a print, for example, a patterned print over a textured surface.
Application of a precisely defined print over a textured surface has proven difficult to accomplish because of the multitude of factors that are implicated in the production process including factors such as coil line speed, the viscosity of the primer and the coating used to create the desired print pattern as well as pressure applied to the metal coil passing through the coating line and the pressure applied to the pick-up roll and the applicator roll.